Responsibility
What does it mean to live a responsible life? I have struggled with this question in my own life. I am not sure of any one answer, but I know the peace I have made within myself about my personal responsibility in my life.
One of my first lessons in adult responsibility came when I was twenty years old. I was clearly aware that I was born homosexual. I was living in my parents' home where homosexuality was considered an abomination and a Roman Catholic mortal sin. When I told my parents about my sexual orientation, their reaction was irrationally violent and rejecting.
I felt responsible for making this right, for healing this family which I had somehow damaged, according to their perception. I was accepting their perception as the correct perception. Though I was expelled from the home in anger, I returned regularly for a while to try to work things through. Each time I did, I was confronted with rage and violence. I was torturing myself needlessly. My perception of my sexual preference was not negative. I realized that my perception of myself was more important than theirs.
Luckily, I realized this before some irreversible damage was done. My responsibility to myself and to my parents was to walk away to prevent something horrendous from happening. My responsibility was to grow away from them to save myself. I walked away and did not communicate with them for three years. When I returned after that time, a very different and mutually adult relationships began between me and my individual parents.
This first success of my following my inner compass, tuned to the pole of nonviolence and love, set me on a path to a life of gauging and accepting responsibility in harmony with my heart, common sense and my conscience, which was informed by past and ongoing study of great religious and nonreligious ethical movements in history. My paramount responsibility on that path has been to be at peace with myself by loving myself.
Loving myself does not imply a narcissist's life of exotic travel, hedonism and weekend spa trips. Loving myself has meant taking full responsibility to nurture and maintain my mind and body. The greater purpose for loving myself is to be capable of loving others and loving my environment. Peace for me is being in loving harmony with myself, with others and with my environment. While I seldom achieve this ideal peace overall, I do aspire to it in every moment, whether I succeed or fail. I believe aspiring to peace in each moment is the only way I may achieve it.
By maintaining my responsibility to myself in this way, I feel I naturally act responsibly toward others and toward my environment. This is a key element of my daily humanist practice.
One of my first lessons in adult responsibility came when I was twenty years old. I was clearly aware that I was born homosexual. I was living in my parents' home where homosexuality was considered an abomination and a Roman Catholic mortal sin. When I told my parents about my sexual orientation, their reaction was irrationally violent and rejecting. I felt responsible for making this right, for healing this family which I had somehow damaged, according to their perception. I was accepting their perception as the correct perception. Though I was expelled from the home in anger, I returned regularly for a while to try to work things through. Each time I did, I was confronted with rage and violence. I was torturing myself needlessly. My perception of my sexual preference was not negative. I realized that my perception of myself was more important than theirs.
Luckily, I realized this before some irreversible damage was done. My responsibility to myself and to my parents was to walk away to prevent something horrendous from happening. My responsibility was to grow away from them to save myself. I walked away and did not communicate with them for three years. When I returned after that time, a very different and mutually adult relationships began between me and my individual parents.
This first success of my following my inner compass, tuned to the pole of nonviolence and love, set me on a path to a life of gauging and accepting responsibility in harmony with my heart, common sense and my conscience, which was informed by past and ongoing study of great religious and nonreligious ethical movements in history. My paramount responsibility on that path has been to be at peace with myself by loving myself.
Loving myself does not imply a narcissist's life of exotic travel, hedonism and weekend spa trips. Loving myself has meant taking full responsibility to nurture and maintain my mind and body. The greater purpose for loving myself is to be capable of loving others and loving my environment. Peace for me is being in loving harmony with myself, with others and with my environment. While I seldom achieve this ideal peace overall, I do aspire to it in every moment, whether I succeed or fail. I believe aspiring to peace in each moment is the only way I may achieve it.
By maintaining my responsibility to myself in this way, I feel I naturally act responsibly toward others and toward my environment. This is a key element of my daily humanist practice.
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